Last year I explored how I discovered I had Synesthesia.
This means that my senses are blended, and when something happens, it causes one of my
senses to activate when it shouldn't.
So, when I hear music, I form an image of it in my head.
This opened up some really interesting conversations with people
I knew about how we all think
But one conversation, in particular, highlighted something particularly unique.
One of my oldest and closest friends, really couldn't
relate to this idea of seeing images in your head.
In fact, she talked about how she had never seen images in her mind at all.
Not even in memories.
Becky and I go way back. We grew up in the same village,
we went to the same primary school,
we also went to the same secondary school, and studied a lot of the same subjects,
and yet, we've experienced all that in completely different ways.
I've had maps and images and sensory experiences guiding me through all of this
and she had none of that.
We dug deeper and found out that this phenomenon is called Aphantasia.
And I caught up with Becky to find out more about it.
So I didn't know about it at all. Didn't know it was a thing
never heard of it in my life.
And my friend sent me a link to a YouTube video
with someone asking do you have Aphantasia?
It is thought that an estimated two to three
percent of people have Aphantasia
But because it's not a recognisable, everyday term it is
possible that these people go their entire lives without
ever knowing that it exists
Want to know if you have Aphanatasia?
Take the apple test
Picture an apple in your mind
Really see it, it's colour and shape
Now look at this image
How vivid was it in your brain from five being nothing
And one being like it was there with you
If you scored a five, you may have Aphantasia
And I thought, well, there is no apple.
There's no apple.
There is no known cure, but many people with Aphantasia
don't even know they have it
And it's not a barrier to anything
For example, did you know that ex-Pixar chief
Ed Catmuul is an Aphant
It's so interesting to me that we've had lives that are so similar
and yet we have experienced them in completely different ways.
I think that the memories I remember the most are
ones that I have like actual physical evidence of.
If I can't see it in a picture it basically hasn't happened.
Like when you think about your childhood bedroom, like, I know that it was purple, but because
there's a picture of it.
That's it, that's my only reason I can remember that
it's purple is because I've got a picture of my bedroom.
When you think about the fact that it was purple, you
know that you're recalling that from a photograph,
but you don't see the photograph in your head?
No. I just know that it's purple but I can't see the purple.
So strangely I am quite good at remembering faces.
I quite often remember faces before I remember names.
But again it's purely memory.
Like if you were to ask me to draw a person or describe a
person's face from memory I couldn't.
But if you brought me that person or showed me a picture
of their face, I could tell you exactly who it was.
That's interesting, maybe you being better at recognising
people from seeing their face upfront is because,
you know, our memories can be changed by like how we felt at the time or our opinion of a person.
So sometimes I might remember someone to look slightly
different than they did because I have a judgement if you know what I mean?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually because I do remember faces really well.
To the point where other folk will say, how do you know them?
And I can tell you exactly how I know them and
a lot of people think that's really strange.
That makes a lot of sense actually.
My dad thinks it's completely bizarre.
Because he said, 'so, when you're reading the Chinese menu,
you mean, you can't picture what the food looks like? You can't imagine the food?'
I'm like, no! He said, 'what?!'
So that's really interesting because my brother asked me,
so say I am reading the Chinese menu and do I, like, imagine
what they taste like before I have them?
And I went Yeah of course!
It's almost like you're bringing the taste back into your,
kind of, mind slash mouth. Do you do anything like that?
No, it's just words! It's just words on a menu.
It means nothing until I've physically got it.
Can you imagine you tasting it? Like you can remember the taste?
Yeah. I think it explains a lot about my personality.
I've always wondered why I couldn't do any art of any sort.
Even down to when we were at school and we had to do your self-portrait, like a drawing of yourself.
And I thought that was like the most challenging thing in the world
because I don t know what I look like.
Even if I was looking in a mirror it still would confuse
me, because as soon as I look away
I've forgotten what I just looked at!
Wow. Oh I never thought, of course, because when you do art you also have to have an idea of what
the end image is going to look like.
Yeah, It's when I talk to you about how you read books.
That I feel like, oh my god, I'm missing out on so much.
So obviously, when you say when you read a book you
said it plays out in your head like a film.
I'm like, wow, it's just me in my head reading a book,
like it's just me reciting words.
But there's no images, there's no main character, there's nothing like that.
Wow. because you are quite an avid reader, what are your
favourite books and when you think about them,
what is it that makes them a good book for you?
Very very hard question for me because although I've read
a lot of books, I can't remember any of them!
I read all the Harry Potters before the films came out, and I
remember at the time a lot of people going
Oh, that's not how I imagined Hermione.
And I remember thinking, what does that mean? Like, that's who she is.
When you were planning your wedding and things like that, like,
what, how did you organise that in your mind?
I didn't. I just hoped for the best. That's like I just wing it through life.
And it probably has a lot to do with how I interpret things.
I've always just been an 'Oh let's see what happens'
because I've never planned ahead.
It was entirely last-minute, 'cause I basically decorated the room myself
On the day!
On the day it was on the day!
In the morning I sent, I sent the best men out to get flowers.
I didn't know I needed them until I d obviously set up and thought,
I could use some flowers.
Purely everything is last minute.
There's something interesting in that though because they
say that people who live in the present are a lot happier
than people who worry about what's going to happen in the future,
or people who dwell on what's happened in the past.
So perhaps by not having that taking up room in your head,
It's almost as if your brain has said this is information that I don't need.
And do you think that that's an advantage in a way?
I think so I don't tend to overthink things. Which I think is really nice.
If something bad happens I usually get over it very very quickly.
Although in saying that I had an interview earlier in the week
and that night I kept replaying phrases that I'd said over and over in my head.
It was just like a constant, just narrative of me saying what I'd said over and over again.
But that's gone, I can't remember what I said now.
I can't remember what the room looked like,
I can't remember what the people that I seen looked like.
Yeah, it just fades so fast, so it just doesn't really bother me.
On the surface, it would almost sound like an amnesia, but it's
not because you do, you do still have a complete recollection of your life.
It's just that it doesn't come to you visually.
And it doesn't stay around to sort of, like, weigh you down.
Do you dream?
Very vividly! It's like watching a film. It's so vivid.
Like, incredibly vivid dreams.
Which is weird because the minute I'm awake, it all goes.
But I've noticed when I start, kind of, you know when you're kind of
on the brink between falling asleep,
that's when I start to see images.
And they come really, really gradually, until I'm obviously
asleep and then it's just really, really vivid.
But the minute I start waking up again, it just fades.
Within you're mind there's the capacity to imagine
something in a visual way, it's just that that's reserved for,
when you're in a, it's almost like a level of activity that
you're brain goes to when you're falling asleep,
and that's when it will kick in.
But then when you're awake and cognitive, it's like:
'We do not need this anymore.'
This is just slowing you down! You don't need this anymore!
I think both Becky and I find advantages and challenges
from the way, our minds perceive the world.
But overall, these discoveries have led me to think in a
very broad sense, about how every single person's mind works differently.
You can take two very similar people and put them
through the same lifestyle, but they'll experience it
completely differently internally, which inevitably leads
to a pretty different external experience for each as well.
I think we all have a unique perspective on the world,
and now, I want to start asking, more and more,
what does it look like inside your mind?
Because we're all different